Data management system and method to host applications and manage storage, finding and retrieval of typed items with support for tagging, connections, and situated queries

ABSTRACT

A data management method to host applications and manage storage, finding and retrieval of typed items with support for tagging, connections, and situated queries is provided.

PRIORITY CLAIMS/RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority under 35 USC 120 and is adivisional/continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/698,398filed on Jan. 25, 2007 and entitled “Data Management System And MethodTo Host Applications And Manage Storage, Finding And Retrieval Of TypedItems With Support For Tagging, Connections, And Situated Queries”, theentirety of which is incorporated herein by reference.

APPENDIX

Appendix A (38 pages) is a listing of the base component and types of anexemplary embodiment of the information model (using a Universal ItemDescription Language described below) and forms part of thespecification.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

A data management system is provided that enables a network of serversto host applications and manage storage, finding and retrieval of typeditems with support for tagging, connections, and situated queries.

BACKGROUND

Data management systems are well known. Currently there are variouslimitations in accessing, finding, aggregating, integrating andpersonalizing the management of content which is published, updated,consumed, syndicated or distributed on the web by individual users,organizations and various third-party content and media serviceproviders. Consider, the intersection of following problems in themedia, internet services and open source development space: (a)proliferation of user-generated content that is published and consumedover the web; (b) the need to design, customize, and deployuser-generated web applications that process user-generated content; (c)the need to enable searching for relevant web applications and contentin a personalized and contextualized way; (d) the need to aggregatecontent across multiple contexts identified descriptively or directly.All of these needs motivate the development of a new data managementapproach. It is desirable to have a data management system that supportsthe management, storage, access to and sharing of various kinds ofinformation types that are available over the internet via distributed,shared applications hosted within a networked environment such that (1)the management and access of all kinds of content can be personalizedvia semantic components, (2) scaled in terms of both the types ofcontent and volume of content, (3) be flexibly accessed by means ofrelationships as well as properties, and (4) adapt to evolution of datasystems in terms, for example, of content structure changes. None of thecurrently available data management systems provide such capabilities.There is also a need for a data management system that is able to managedata in a personalized and context specific way for both traditionalbusiness data (e.g., in real-estate application services, banking andfinancial services, B2B e-commerce services such as supply chain andinventory management) and consumer-oriented data (e.g., in B2Ce-commerce services, social networking and media domains) which is notprovided by existing systems.

Furthermore, for managing an increasing amount of user-generated andthird-party generated content that is accessible and published over theweb in conjunction with capabilities of allowing users to design, deployand evolve their applications, current data management systems (forexample using an object-relational database systems based on the SQL)will have various challenges to cut operational and maintenance costwhen employing a traditional database engine to manage user's content.For example, it is desirable to reduce storage cost, server hardwarecost, network bandwidth cost and database application work/overheadcost. It is desirable to provide a data management system that achievesthese reductions in operational and maintenance costs.

For a data management system, it is also desirable to extend querylanguage semantics using type-aware query language that can handleextensibility of data types which is not scalable with existing datamanagement systems. Traditional data management system, for examplebased on object-relational database management system (O-RDBMS), haveissues of scalability as more and more types are added to the system, aseach type requires its own DB table and many queries have to cross alltypes.

Further it is important to enable the modeling of context. The keybarrier to scalability in many computing systems is the ability topartition the set of data into smaller subsets within which mostactivity can take place. A data management system which exploits thisfact in the interest of performance and scalability is required.

In traditional database systems when a client asks a question regardingsome information of interest it is not possible to retain the meaning ofthe question when the client transitions from one context to anothercontext. This is needed to allow user-generated applications that aredesigned and customized by and for a particular user, and to be re-usedby other users. The data management system and method described belowachieves these goals and it is to this end that the data managementsystem and method are directed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a data management system;

FIG. 2A illustrates a storage model of the data management system wherea cell instance, functioning as a server that host both application andcontent server, has a dedicated database container that employs astorage device;

FIG. 2B illustrates more details of the data management system;

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a piece of Java code that can beinvoked to create an item instance in a dedicated database container(for a particular cell instance) that can store a collection of XMLdocument instances of any XML type is shown in FIG. 2;

FIG. 4 illustrates a Universal Item Information Model;

FIG. 5 an exemplary implementation of a data structure for anAbstractItemKind;

FIG. 6 illustrates an example definition of BasicItemDescriptorType usedto describe the <ItemDetails> child element included in anAbstractItemKind;

FIGS. 7A and 7B illustrate an example of a Contact item;

FIGS. 8A and 8B illustrate an example of a Photo item;

FIGS. 9A and 9B illustrate an example of a Book item;

FIGS. 10A and 10B illustrate an example of an Auto item;

FIGS. 11A and 11B illustrate an external content model;

FIG. 12 illustrates examples of the content kinds encapsulated using theUniversal Item Information Model;

FIGS. 13A-13D illustrate further details of the system tag shown in FIG.6;

FIG. 14 illustrates further details of the system defined connectionsshown in FIG. 6;

FIGS. 15A and 15B illustrate further details of the user definedconnections shown in FIG. 6

FIG. 16 illustrates an example specification of application componentthat can process Contact items;

FIG. 17A illustrates a set of code for the query to fetch all of theContactItems in a sorted order;

FIG. 17B illustrates a set of code for the query to fetch all of theconnectedContacts for the ContactItem shown in FIG. 13;

FIG. 18 illustrates a conceptual model of user-defined connection from agiven an item to a set of related items user-defined connection model;and

FIG. 19 illustrates the specification of a situated query having a scopedeclaration and query expression.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF AN EMBODIMENT

The invention is particularly applicable to a XML-based data managementsystem and method to manage the storage, access, update and integrationof content that is described using a Universal Item Description Language(UIDL) and that supports a hierarchical, objected-oriented, semanticallyrich data type model using a Universal Item Information Model (UM), andit is in this context that the system and method will be described. Itwill be appreciated, however, that the data management system and methodmay use other types of information that is not specifically modeled inthe Universal Item Information Model (UIIM) and may be implemented usingschema languages other than XML Schema Definition (XSD) language and/orUniversal Item Description Language (UIDL).

FIG. 1 illustrates a data management system 50 wherein one or more cells52 (such as Cell A, Cell B and Cell C as shown in FIG. 1) manage thestorage, access, update and integration of typed objects and otherinformation associated with the typed objects. Each cell may alsoinclude one or more instances 54 of various types of objects that arecontained within the cell. Moreover, cells may also contain any numberof applications. Hence, the server that hosts a cell instance managesboth the hosting of applications and local storage of content. Anexemplary embodiment of each cell may be a XML document-orientedcontainer in a commercially available XMLDB database as described inmore detail below. In general, each cell may have a set of indices 56.In an exemplary embodiment, each object in a cell may be an item that isan instance of a type that extends from the AbstractItemKind base typeas described below in more detail. In the data management system, anobject may be connected to another object in the same cell or in adifferent cell via a connection 58 as shown in FIG. 1. Each connectionmay be implemented as a field/container/record within an object recordof the data management system. The connections permit a user of the datamanagement system to associate one or more objects with each otherwherein the connections may be generated by a user or automaticallygenerated by the system. An example of a ContactItemKind object with oneor more user generated connections as well as one or more automaticallysystem generated connections is described in more detail below. Eachobject in the cell may also have zero or more tags associated with theobject wherein each tag associate a piece of information with theparticular object wherein the tags may be generated by a user orautomatically generated by the system. An example of a ContactItemKindobject with one or more user generated tags as well as one or moreautomatically system generated tags is described in more detail below.Hence, each cell contains a data base (the objects in the cell) so thatthe data for the cell is contained within the cell. The data managementsystem may also implement a situated query language (described below inmore detail) wherein the query is composed and processed from theperspective of a Cell X (i.e., query is processed based on the object(s)within Cell X) and other cells in certain relationships to Cell X. Suchqueries may be known as situated queries. In the exemplary embodiment,the query language may leverage XQuery 1.0 (an XML-based Query Languagestandard developed by W3C). Situated queries will allow queries to beexpressed according to the personal situation of the user such that usercan retrieve and compare information from specifically identified and/orrelationally described context; and that the meaning of these queriespersist as the applications which contain them when moved from one cellto another cell.

FIG. 2A illustrates a storage model of the data management system. Inthe storage model, item instances or object instances pertaining to aparticular cell may be stored in a document container managed by a XMLDatabase System. Hence, each cell may be stored in its own XML DBdocument container that functions as a document-centric container forall of the item instances belonging with that cell. Furthermore, sincethe document-centric container of the XML DB holds a collection of iteminstances as XML documents, each cell instance can have a collection ofheterogeneous content that employs the Universal Item Information Model(UIIM) to enforce a consistent data type model that is object- andsemantic-oriented and extensible and uniformly represented as iteminstances in the DB container whose types are described using theUniversal Item Description Language (UIDL). This approach to datamanagement is fundamentally different than existing web and enterpriseapplications that maintain a dedicated database table, possibly on adedicated database host, for each type of content. For an applicationthat needs to integrate and have access to a wide variety of content,for example media (including photos, videos, audio and podcasts), blogs,calendar, contacts, email, and other structured data (includingautomobile, books, movies, etc.) which are supported by specificthird-parties that specialize in specific types of e-commerce servicesand catalogs of items, and other unstructured content that may begenerated by end users, it will be an expensive scalability andextensibility approach to maintain dedicated database tables for eachtype of content. The above described approach of maintaining dedicateddatabase instance for a cell which hosts both application and itscontent such that it allows storage, access and integration of varioustypes of content to be more scaleable and extensible than existingdatabase-driven web and enterprise applications.

In an exemplary implementation of the data management system, acommercially available Berkeley XML embeddable database is used as thestorage device for the cells and the one or more items in each cell. Inthe exemplary implementation, the objects stored within cells use theobject- and semantic-oriented Universal Item Description Language (UIDL)(extending the well known XML Schema definition language) to describethose objects. The cell interfaces with an embeddable XML database(whose document-centric container is used to store and access any typeof content) which provides native XML support and no processing overheadcost due to XML-to-Java-to-SQL transformation (typically expected inexisting Java-based database driven applications). Elimination of suchdata transformation and SQL round-trips over the network will result indecrease in cost of procuring server hardware and a scalable andextensible data management solution. Since there will be no SQLcall-outs due to the content being locally accessed, inserted andupdated there will also be better performance and response time.Furthermore, the model partitions large data sets of heterogeneous itemsinto smaller contextual subsets containing items likely to be processedat the same time together with applications which will do theprocessing. In addition, for the exemplary implementation, there is noneed to develop another XML querying mechanism since the system canexploit XML Query support in the commercially available BerkeleyDatabase XML using the W3C XQuery Language. Thus, the system may utilizean XML database for content storage in combination with the UniversalItem Information Model (UIIM) and XML-based Universal Item DescriptionLanguage (UIDL) described above in the exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 2B illustrates more details of the data management system 60 thatinteracts with a client 62 in order to host applications and managestorage, finding and retrieval of typed items with support for tagging,connections, and situated queries. The data management system mayfurther include an application server 64 and an XML database 66 asdescribed above wherein the application server interacts with the XMLdatabase. The application server 64 may further include a contentprocessor 68, an application component 70, an item processor 72 and aquery processor 74. The content processor 68 may receive information andcontent such as RSS data, email messages and structured data such asbooks, and process that data to add item(s) into a cell that is storedin the XML database using the item processor 72. The applicationcomponent 70 may be a piece of code that performs various operations andfunctions on the items in a cell wherein certain elements (an XMLdocument insert or update or query) interact with the XML database 66.For example, the application component may add item(s) or update item(s)in a cell (using the item processor 72) in order to perform an XMLdocument insert or update operation with the XML database 66. Theapplication component may also generate a situated query (describedbelow in more detail) for item(s) in the one or more cells which isprocessed by the query processor 74 in order to generate a XQueryexpression that is applied to the XML database 66. The contentprocessor, item processor and the query processor may be implemented, inan exemplary embodiment, a plurality of pieces of computer code that areexecuted by the application server.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of Java code that can be invoked atrun-time to create a document instance in the XML embedded database thatmay be used in the exemplary implementation of the data managementsystem. The document instance represents any user-defined content thatis defined as an instance of a specific XML object type (that is derivedfrom the base object type (the AbstractItem type in the exemplaryembodiment). The data storage model can be used to store any type of XMLcontent such that all content stored in the DB container are XMLdocument instances of various types. Hence, the data management systemcan store heterogeneous types of objects for a given cell. Each cell hasa dedicated DB container which is used to manage storage and access ofrequired content/objects contained in the cell. The transactionparameter in the code is the transaction that is participating and/orprocessing a document instance represented by the document parameter inthe code such that the document instance (representing an item) iscreated in the specified XML database container whose name is specifiedalong with the document name and related data and metadata. It should beappreciated that this is basically the generic use of the XML DatabaseSystem for cells that function as server instances which hostapplications and manage content. Now, an example of a Universal ItemInformation Model (UIIM) that may be used to model types of contentstored and accessed using data management system will be described inmore detail.

A Universal Item Information Model (UIIM) is presented that accomplishesseveral goals and overcomes certain problems that have existed. Inparticular, the universal item information model can be used topersonalize and simplify the process of content consumption, sharing andpublishing in a system in which various types of existing and newuser-defined content needs to published, consumed and shared by and fromvarious sources. The universal item information model addresses dataintegration from disparate sources as is needed currently in the areasof social networking, consumer-oriented and business-orientedapplication integration platforms. The Universal Item Information Model(UIIM) also provides the ability to preserve and leverage existing andlegacy content formats within the Universal Item Information Model(UIIM) such that interoperability with existing consumers and publishersand their applications is possible within a networked communityenvironment where a system supports the handling of all kinds of new andexisting content.

FIG. 4 illustrates a Universal Item Information Model 110 for an itemthat is an exemplary embodiment of the Universal Item Information Model.The Universal Item Information Model for an item may be used to supporta pluggable content model such that the model can describe any itemusing a generic item description (an AbstractItemKind 112) that isapplicable to any type of information item. The underlying item's formatis preserved via encapsulating (or wrapping) the original item in atype-specific container item defined within the universal informationmodel. The type-specific container items are created using specializedcomponent types that employ the Universal Item Information Model thathas an AbstractItem kind component which describes any item using ageneric abstract definition. Extending the AbstractItem component viatype-specific container item kinds allows the creation of a universalitem information taxonomy that comprises various types of information,for example, BlogKind, CalendarKind, ContactKind, DocumentKind,LinkKind, MediaKind, etc. The direct extensions from theAbstractItemKind are referred to as the base component types (and theirinstances are referred to as base components) since they describegenerally an item component within a general domain, for example, aMediaKind component refers to generally all kinds of media item. Thebase component types can be extended to additional specialized types toexpress specific characteristics, for example a PhotoKind extends theMediaKind. The universal item information taxonomy will also be referredas the universal item taxonomy. Hence, the type-specific container itemkinds (representing specialized types of content and information) extendthe AbstractItem component which is the base type of the model. TheUniversal Item Information Model allows a system to represent and managethe access, distribution, management and actionability of any type ofitem by describing its schema using the Universal Item DescriptionLanguage (UIDL). The initial set of universal information item componenttypes within the UIDL schema framework are expressed using the W3C XMLSchema Definition (XSD) Language, but it is possible to describe thebase and derived components of UIDL in various other object-orientedlanguages. New types of content created by a user or a user-definedapplication can be expressed by defining a new component type thatextends from the AbstractItem base type and/or from one of the existingbase component types already defined within the Universal Item Taxonomy,for example, the DocumentKind or MediaKind if it is a new type ofdocument-oriented or media-oriented content. The new user-definedcontent (also referred as a new type of item) can be published or sharedwithin a community of users as an instant of the newly defined componenttype. Hence, the Universal Information Model supports an extensibilitymechanism that is needed to model, describe and instantiate new contentgenerated or consumed by a user or a community or an application. Thisextensibility mechanism is within the framework of abstracting aninformation item as an AbstractItem from which any specific kind ofinformation item can be derived as a specialized type.

Since the Universal Item Information Model (UIIM) and Universal ItemDescription Language (UIDL) can be employed to model and representvarious types of information items, it should be noted that itemsexpressed in UIDL can be stored in a database or in-memory cache, ortransmitted on-the-wire over any communication channel (for example,HTTP, TLS, SMTP, SMS), or instantiated by an application service—all ofthese scenarios can employ the same description of the item based onUIDL.

FIG. 5 illustrates an exemplary implementation of a data structure foran AbstractItem and FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a schema describingan AbstractItemKind. The AbstractItemKind is an abstract base type forall item content definitions (since all of the other item definitionsare based on the AbstractItem and inherit the characteristics of theAbstractItem due to the inheritance of the object model) and istherefore reusable. Hence, the AbstractItem provides the basecharacteristics of each item in a system.

The AbstractItemKind includes sub-components that describe the generalcharacteristics of any item in one or more general characteristicselements, such as the data structure fields shown in FIG. 6. Thesegeneral characteristics are independent of the type of item and areincluded as part of the <ItemDetails> sub-element that Item instancesinherit from the base type AbstractItemKind. A set of examples of thegeneral characteristics of an item are:

-   -   LogicalServerID—this refers to some logical application and        content server where the item is located and managed; this is        also known as the cell server ID;    -   ContentSize—the size of the underlying content in bytes;    -   CreatedBy—the user who published (or inserted) an item; this        user may or may not be the original publisher of the content        rather the user who actually inserted (or copied) the content to        a particular application and content server;    -   CreationTime—the date and time when the item was published (or        inserted) via an application; this time may or may not be        original publication date or time of the content rather the time        when the user actually inserted the content in a particular        application and content server;    -   ItemID—specifies the unique item identifier of the information        item;    -   KindID—specifies the unique identifier to identify the type of        content that the item instance is of;    -   LastModified—specified the date and time when the item was last        modified;    -   Title—specifies a title of the item, e.g., this may be the        Subject of the email or title of a book instance;    -   UpdatedBy—specifies the user who last modified the item;

The AbstractItem kind also includes sub-components that describe varioussemantic characteristics of any item (using one or more semanticproperty elements) as part of the <ItemDetails> child element that Iteminstances inherit from the AbstractItem component. These semanticcharacteristics provide capabilities to describe additional informationabout a specific content, i.e., item instance, in a personalized andcontext specific way such that it can be used for various search,information navigation and filtering and other actions applicable to acontent of a certain type. The semantic properties can be expresseduniformly for all kinds of information items by defining varioussemantic components within the AbstractItem component. This approachimplies that derived types of content (e.g., a item instances of thetypes PhotoKind or a BlogKind or an AutoKind) that are extensions of theAbstractItemKind component would inherit identical sets of semanticproperties which are therefore applicable to all instances of thosederived item types. Following is a set of semantic elements defined aspart of the <ItemDetails> child element of the AbstractItem component:

-   -   Zero or more user-defined tags (represented by the <UserTags>        child element) which are free-form text entered by the user to        add additional meaning or context to a specific information        item;    -   Multiple system-managed tags (represented by the <SysTag> child        element) which are generated automatically by a system along        some standardized set of attributes, for example, Time, Person,        Location, Category, and Rating. It is expected that an        application and content server, i.e., the system that processes        the publishing or creation of an item would have capabilities to        process the generic, semantic and type-specific descriptions of        an item to generate the derived system-managed tags. The details        of the system-managed tag model and structure is described in        more detail below with reference to FIGS. 13A-13D;    -   Zero or more Notes (represented by the <Note> child element)        which can be created by different users to describe an item in        additional detail depending on the user's context and situation;    -   Zero or more user-defined connections which are used to connect        related items to other item instances. The user-defined        connections are described in more detail below with reference to        FIGS. 15A and 15B;    -   Zero or more system-defined connections (described in terms of        Source and SysConnID) which are generated automatically. For        example, certain types of content are received via a        communication channel such as email instances (via SMTP        protocol) or RSS data feed (via HTTP protocol) and there is a        need to connect the received content (e.g., the email) with        additional content that is referenced and/or is part of it.        E.g., a Photo attachment or a URL link included in an email        would result in system-defined connections between the email        message instance and the Photo item and Link item instances. The        system-defined connections are described in more detail below        with reference to FIG. 14.

Thus, the AbstractItem specifies one or more general characteristicelements (that can contain general characteristics) and one or moresemantic property elements (that can contain the semantic properties ofa particular instance of an item) of each item in the model. Since theabove generic characteristics and semantic characteristics are describedin a generic way for any type of item (that may be content), theuniversal item information model can be used by various types ofapplications wherein the applications can uniformly process the genericand semantic components of any type of item. In one example of the useof the universal item information model, the flexibility of theuniversal information model can be used by a scalable and extensiblemedia operating system which can host media-rich applications that willbe shared and customized by a consumer-oriented user community or abusiness-oriented user community.

Returning to FIG. 4, the model may have one or more core component typesthat are use case independent and are primitive data types. The corecomponent types may include an amount type, a binary content type, anidentifier type, a measure type, a numeric type, a quantity type and atext type. The listing of the core component types for the exemplaryembodiment of the information model is attached as Appendix A that formspart of the specification and in incorporated herein by reference. Themodel may also include one or more base components 114 (children of theAbstractItem) that are reusable item kinds that permit, in this example,a particular type of item/content to be stored using each particulartype of item kind. The base components may include a BlogKind, aContactKind, a LinkKind, a MediaKind, a DocumentKind, a MessageKind, aCalendarKind, an EventKind, a To-DoKind, a TaskKind, a PhotoKind, etcwherein each of these base components inherit characteristics from theAbstractItemKind and then further define the characteristics associatedwith the particular type of item, such as a photo piece of contentdefined by the PhotoKind. Some of the base components may have one ormore extensions to additional of specialized kinds of sub-items, such asthe MediaKind having an AudioKind, a VideoKind and a PhotoKind or theMessageKind having. Email-MessageKind and a Text-MessageKind (that has aIM MessageKind) wherein the sub-items inherit the characteristics of theItemKind from which the sub-item is based and then contain furthercharacteristics of the particular type of sub-item/content. For example,the BinaryDocument Kind inherits the characteristics of the DocumentKindand then has further characteristics that are associated with the binarydocument kind. The schema may also include one or more aggregatedcomponents 116 that consist of combining and encapsulating multipletypes of item kinds to create new complex item kinds focused on aparticular industry or area. For example, we could combine as childelements a photo item of type PhotoKind with a note item of typeNoteKind by defining a new aggregate and complex content type thatencapsulates such item instances. The schema may further includevertical application domain extensions that are specialized extensionsof the AbstractItemKind. These items can be used for a particularvertical and/or community application domains. For example, theStructuredDataKind may include an ApparelKind, an AutoKind, a BookKind,a MovieKind, a MusicKind, a Real-EstateKind (for real estate relatedcontent/items), a VideoGameKind and a WineKind.

For each base component (a kind of item in the example shown in FIG. 4),the universal information model also may include elements (for exampledata structure fields) that allow zero or more views, zero or moreactions or zero or more constraints. The views, actions and constraintscan be described separately from the schema definition of the item kindsuch that they are referenced back to the item kind identifier. This waywe can ensure that views, actions, and constraints can be associatedwith the type of the item. Furthermore, views, actions, constraints canbe defined at the AbstractItemKind component level such that they areinherited by the base components and other derived types of the basecomponents.

Views

The zero or more views describe ways of displaying instances of theparticular base component type (such as an ContactItem kind in theexample above). Examples of some views that could be supported for aspecific kind of item may include 1) display the item in a list view.E.g., for a contact item display the first_name and last_name elementssuch that each contact item appears in a single line; or 2) display anexpanded view that displays all base component meta-data that isapplicable to that kind of base component. In both cases the applicableelements are specified as part of the view specification for theparticular base component type.

Actions

The zero or more actions may be applicable to processing an item of agiven type. Examples of generic actions that can be supported for allkinds of items are: AddItem, UpdateItem, and DeleteItem. Examples ofsome of the actions that could be supported for an item that is ofparticular type, for example, a Contact kind (shown in FIG. 4) mayinclude: addMember or importVCard. Each type of action for a specificbase component (kind of an item in the item model shown in FIG. 4) canbe expressed in terms of the name of the action, parameters that will bepassed to the method that will process the action, and the type ofreturn value. For example, the action specification for the importVCardaction for the Contact item kind may be:

<action name=“importVCard” componentAction=“contact.ImportVCard”uiLabel=“ImportVCard”> <parameter dataType=“stream” name=“vcard”uiLabel=“VCard file”/> <returnType>items</returnType> </action>

A second example of an action that can be associated with an item kindare ones which refer to a one or more service providers that can processan item. For example, a photo item may have PrintAction that isprocessed by a web-based photo printing service provided by athird-party. Here is an example specification to reference a serviceprovider that can process an action associated with a specific itemkind:

<xs:complexType name=“ItemActionLinkKind”>  <xs:complexContent>  <xs:extension base=“ns:AbstractItemKind”>    <xs:annotation>    <xs:documentation>      This specifies the invocation of athird-party web application or resource over HTTP Protocol. Theinvocation mechanism and para-      meters are included in thespecification such that the      consuming application can compose andinvoke the URL      at run-time. </xs:documentation>    </xs:annotation>   <xs:sequence>     <xs:element name=“Name” type=“xs:string”/>    <xs:element name=“Description” type=“xs:string” minOccurs=“0”/>    <xs:element name=“ItemKindID” type=“xs:string”/>     <xs:elementname=“BaseURL” type=“xs:anyURI” minOccurs=“0”/>     <xs:elementname=“InvocationType” type=“ns:HttpInvocationType”/>     <xs:elementname=“Parameter” type=“ns:ItemActionParameter” minOccurs=“0”maxOccurs=“unbounded”/>    </xs:sequence>    <xs:attributename=“category” type=“xs:string” use=“optional”/>   </xs:extension> </xs:complexContent> </xs:complexType>

A third example is of an action (associated with an item kind) that isprocessed by a business process which is invoked by an API.

Constraints

The zero or more constraints may be applicable to items of a given type(i.e., an instance of an item kind in the exemplary universal iteminformation model). The constraints may include type constraints and/orsemantic constraints. The type constraints for each child element of anitem are part of the XML schema definition. The semantic constraints maybe applicable to any or all elements within the item. Furthermore, thesemantic constraints express which combinations of item element valuesare acceptable as possible values within the information system. Forexample, for an element representing a <PostalCode>, the constraint canlimit the data entered by the end user to be numeric even if the typedefinition of this element is xsd:string type within the XML schemanamespace. For an element representing <Phone>, the constraint can limitthe data entered to be of a specific format and length. Another exampleis that of a contact item can not have a child element <Gender> withvalue equal to “Male” and an another child element <Relationship> withvalue equal to “Mother”.

The views, actions and constraints may be expressed in data structurespecifications outside the item kind definition such that they arereferenced (and inherited) via an identifier to the AbstractItemKindcomponent which is the base type of all items, or referenced via anItemKindID identifier to another base component that is derived from theAbstractItem kind, or referenced via an ItemKindID identifier directlyto a particular item kind definition. This way these views, actions andconstraints can be applied to an item kind included in the universalitem information model.

FIGS. 7A and 7B illustrate an example of a ContactItem kind. TheContactItem kind has the item details and also has examples of thesystem and user defined tags wherein the system tags are generated by asystem that utilizes the universal item information model while the usertags may be generated by the user of the system that uses the universalitem information model. Similarly, FIGS. 8A and 8B show a PhotoKind thathas the item details (the generic characteristics of the PhotoItem) andboth system and user tags. The PhotoKind example also includes a photoand thumbnail that are incorporated into the PhotoKind. Similarly, theBookKind (shown in FIGS. 9A and 9B) includes the item details, thesystem and user tags and also encapsulates a particular book (“TheHaunted House”) along with information about the particular book and theAutoKind (shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B) includes the item details, thesystem and user tags and also encapsulates a particular car (a “HondaAccord”) along with information about the particular car.

As set forth above, the universal item information model may havevertical application domain extensions that are specialized extensionsof the ItemKind. There are multiples ways to extend the Universal ItemInformation Model to support domain specific needs of a particular classof applications. For example, three techniques can be used to supportextensions for vertical application domains and those techniques are:

1) To support specialized extensions needed by a particular domain oruse case, for example, a real-estate application, it is possible toextend the existing types of item kinds. As an example, it is possiblethat the <Note> component (shown in FIG. 4) needs to have additionalproperties such as a special identifier of the EmployeeID of thereal-estate broker as part of the extended <Note> component. Suchadditional properties can be added for a vertical application domain byextending existing NoteKind XML complex type as follows:

<xs:complexType name=“RealEstateNoteKind”>  <xs:complexContent>  <xs:extension base=“ns:NoteKind”>    <xs:sequence>     <xs:elementname=“EmployeeID” type=“xs:string”/>    </xs:sequence>   </xs:extension> </xs:complexContent> </xs:complexType>

2) Certain application domains may also need to combine existing kindsof content together for specialized complex types, for example, <Note>and <Photo> component may need to be combined for a particular type ofaggregated component needed for the real-estate domain.

3) If the above two methods of extensions do not address the needs of aspecific domain, it is possible to extend the AbstractItem component toa specialized base type.

The new types of schema components could also be defined in its own XMLschema namespace that is dedicated to a particular vertical applicationdomain such that all the general and semantic characteristics and otherapplicable base component characteristics (if extension carried out froman existing base component type) are inherited by the extension definedwithin the namespace of the vertical application domain.

FIGS. 11A and 11B illustrate an external content model and FIG. 12illustrates examples of the content kinds generated using the universalinformation model. The universal information model provides a model forhandling external content. External content typically will be inexisting formats that are standardized for media files (for example,.jpeg photo file or .mpeg video file formats), documents produced byvarious authoring tools (for example, .doe, or .txt or .pdf fileformats), or other business documents that are formally defined and usedby a community of users via XML-based Web Services (for example using anItem schema component representing an item for sale at Amazon.com or anitem that is being auctioned by a seller at eBay.com; or, a Rental itemdescribed at some realtor site). The mechanism employed to handle (i.e.,allow storage, access and processing of) externally defined content (asshown in FIG. 9A) will be by:

1) Describing the underlying externally defined content using genericmeta data description included in the AbstractItemKind component whichis applicable to any information item (or content), i.e., bothuser-defined content and other externally-defined content. Such genericmeta-data description for any information item (whether definedexternally by a 3^(rd) party or directly and locally as user-definedcontent) is expressed within the <ItemDetail> element of theAbstractItem component; and

2) Wrapping the externally-defined content into an external contentelement that can carry any kind of content, i.e., including binarycontent or other specially formatted content as well as content thathave a formalized XML schema definition within a namespace owned ormanaged by a particular business service entity.

Since external content would be processed as a derived type ofAbstractItem kind, any kind of content will have fundamentally identicalbase type definitions that allow external content created by thirdparties to be generally processed by a system that uses the informationmodel via a combination of generic AbstractItem handler for commoninformation item processing functions and content-type specific handlerto process the underlying format-specific content using a 3^(rd) partyspecific application library. This approach allows seamless integrationof external content which can be “plugged-in” to any system which usesthe Universal Item Taxonomy since there is no need to transform theformat of the external content. FIG. 9B illustrates an example of thedata structure for the Kind that handles the external binary content.The approach of representing an external content kind permits re-use ofexternally defined content from various sources via a generic meta dataexpression and processing mechanism (for any kind of external content)which will allow interoperability with existing content serviceproviders and applications that use or generate content in variousexisting content formats and also make the content into derived typewithin Universal Item Taxonomy.

FIGS. 13A-13D illustrate further details of the system-managed tag<SysTag> shown in FIG. 6. System-managed tags are used by a unit thatstores the cells (a cell server) to automatically categorize an itembased on a fixed set of semantic attributes of Time, Person, Location,Category and Rating which are referred to as the system-managed tagtypes. These system-managed tag types allow the system to extractrelevant attributes from any type of item when it is published (i.e.,created or inserted into the cell's database) and automaticallycategorize and map the value of the specific element within the item toa particular system-managed tag type. Hence, the purpose ofsystem-managed tags is to enable searching, querying across a databasecontaining many different types of content such in a way that allowscertain common concepts to be accessed via system-managed tag types.This automatic process of semantic categorization is uniformly carriedout as part of inserting or updating any type of an item into thedatabase locally managed by a cell. In particular, an example of thedata structure for a system-managed tag is shown in FIG. 13A and anexample of a model for the system-managed tag is shown in FIG. 13B. Eachsystem-managed tag type may support one or more roles. The roles referto specific elements within the <ItemDetails> child element within theAbstractItemKind and/or elements within specific base component type(extending the AbstractItemKind) that the item is an instance of. Hence,the roles are used at run-time by the system to extract particularcharacteristics of an item that can be normalized (or mapped) tospecific dimensions, i.e., types of system-level tags. Moreover, thevalues of these roles can either be determined on-the-fly at run-timeby, for example, the XPath references to the actual values within thespecific elements that are referenced for the roles or stored explicitlywith item instances when they are inserted or published into theinformation system. Also, the system-managed tag model and structureimplies that multiple roles can be specified for a particular type ofsystem-level tag. Finally, the above description related tosystem-managed tags implies that is applicable in a type-independent wayto semantically extract relevant characteristics of any type of itemsaccording to well-known system level tag types. The system-managed tagsand roles are used to configure indices for each cell's database, suchthat queries made as part of various search sessions directed at aparticular cell's database can efficiently retrieve relevant items fromthe database based on the keywords entered by the user in the searchinterface. When an object in the database is updated, the indices basedon the system-level tags and roles are automatically cleared out andthen the system-level tags are regenerated based on the updatedinformation about the object in the database.

FIG. 13C illustrates a general example of system-level tag types alongwith exemplary set of one or more possible roles and purposes associatedwith each type of system-managed tag. In particular, for a given kind ofitem, the system-level tag type Time may define roles that reference theelements <CreationTime> and <ModifiedTime> (in the <ItemDetails> childelement defined in the AbstractItemKind). The two roles specified inthis example for Time tag type for an item have the purpose of findingan item based on when the item was created or modified. Similarly, thePerson system-managed tag type may have roles defined that reference theelements <CreatedBy>, <Source> and <Artist>. The three roles specifiedin this example for the Person tag type have purposes of finding an itembased on who created or owns or sent or published an item; or was theartist mentioned in the item. Similarly, the system-managed tag typeLocation may have roles defined that reference <WebPage> child elementwithin a specific kind of item's definition (for example, a ContactItemkind), a <CityName> child element within an Address component of aspecific kind of item (for example an EventItem kind or ContactItemkind), <Postalcode> child element within an Address component of somespecific kind of item, and <Geo-location> element that identifies the(latitude, longitude) of an item. The roles specified in this examplefor the Location tag type have the purposes of finding an item based onwhere the item is located on the web or physically. Similarly, theCategory system-managed tag type may have roles defined that referenceelements <Organization> and <Genre>. The two roles specified in thisexample for the Category tag type have purposes of finding an item basedon the organization affiliated with the item; for example, this may beneeded to find the contact item of a friend who works in a particularorganization or company, or find an item based on the general concept orclassification scheme that is associated with the item that happens tobe a book item. Similarly Rating system-managed tag type may have rolesdefined that reference the elements <Feedback Rating> or <Movie Rating>or <Reputation> or <Recommendation>. These roles specified in thisexample have purposes of finding an item based on ratings that may beassociated with an item that are defined by a community of users or athird-party content service provider. FIG. 13D illustrates an example ofthe system-level tags for the ContactItem kind shown in FIGS. 7A and 7Bwith the one or more roles and the purpose of each type of system-leveltag for the ContactItem Kind shown in FIG. 13D.

As an example, when a contact item is created and inserted into thedatabase of a particular cell server that a user is interacting withover the web, the <PersonName> child element of the ContactItem kindwould be employed automatically by the system to generate a set ofsystem-managed tags for the Person tag type with roles of <FirstName>,<LastName>, and <FullName>. The values of these tags can be determinedat run-time (using an XPath reference) by the system from the contentsof the contact item (i.e., from the <PersonName> element). Once thesystem-managed tags are determined, the system also creates index entrycorresponding to these elements representing roles for the particulartype of system-managed tag. In specific implementation example of usingthe XML Database, such indices are updated in the document container ofthe XML database associated with the cell where the new item isinserted. Lastly, the roles associated with a particular system-managedtag will be driven by the type of system-level tag and the type ofcontent (i.e., item kind). Thus, for the contact item kind case thefollowing pre-defined set of roles and XPath specifications would beemployed at the time the contact item instance is inserted into thedatabase of a given cell:

System Tag Type Role/Qualifier XPath Purpose Time Creation_time./ItemDetails/ Find by creation CreationTime time (of the item) TimeModified_time ./ItemDetails/ Find by modified LastModified time (of theitem) Person FirstName ./PersonName/ Find by first name FirstName of aperson Person LastName ./PersonName/ Find by last name LastName ofperson Person FullName ./PersonName/ Find by fullname (i.e., FirstName &both first name and ./PersonName/ last name) of person LastName PersonCreatedBy ./ItemDetails/ Find by name of person CreatedBy who createdthe item Person UpdatedBy ./ItemDetails/ Find by name of personUpdatedBy who updated the item Category Organization./Organization/Title Find by the name of the organization that a personis affiliated with

Hence, contextual information extracted from the item, allows the systemto aid in the finding experience of the user by exploiting at run-timesystem-managed indices that are generated automatically by the systemagainst a standard set of tag types and a pre-defined set of rolescorresponding to the set of tag types. Lastly, for the system tags, whenan object/item is modified in the data management system, thecorresponding system-managed index entries for the item areautomatically updated based on the new values of the roles(corresponding to the system-managed tag types) associated with theitem/object.

The above has been a description of the pre-defined set ofsystem-managed tag types and the corresponding roles that are applicableto each type of system-managed tag for a given type of item (i.e.,content). It is also possible for an administrator of the system todefine additional roles for a given type of system-managed tag for agiven type of item. For example, we may want to do that to optimizesearches for a particular kind of item or for a new kind of item thatextends from AbstractItemKind or some other base type from theAbstractItemKind. It is also possible to support new types ofsystem-managed tags that can be generally applicable across varioustypes of items (i.e., content). It should be appreciated that suchcapabilities will allow the administrator of the data management systemto extend the semantic capabilities of the system to support specifictypes of system-managed tags and their applicable roles.

From above description of the tag model and processing mechanism, itshould be appreciated that the system-managed and user generated tagsstored with item (via the AbstractItemKind component model) allow theuniform processing of semantic properties extracted from the items whichare stored as document instance in the database and permit the datamanagement system to provide searching capabilities wherein the searchescan be based on the system and user defined tags consistently.Additionally, it should be appreciated that current keyword basedsearches to find relevant content available on the interne is limitedsince keywords may represent from the user's perspective variouspurposes that are not restricted or qualified by roles (as applied tosystem-managed tag types). This means that when, for example, a userenters “1974” it could mean the year “1974” or the user's intentioncould have been to find some information about a location with “1974”representing the numeric part of a street address. The approachdescribed above to semantically extend the XML-based database systemthat manages items as documents with user-defined and system-managedtags as well as additional semantic properties previously identified(for example, notes that a user can add to an item and which is storedas an integral part of the item via the AbstractItem kind that has a<Notes> child element) allows effective means of characterizing contentin a personalized and contextualized manner such that system can takeadvantage of these across the types of content in a uniform manner. Thisapproach will make it easier and efficient to integrate different typesof content and navigate between different types of content since alltypes of content will be stored in one database instance that is locallycontrolled by the cell server which functions as an application andcontent server.

FIG. 14 illustrates further details of the system defined connectionsshown in FIG. 6. System defined connection allow I-to-many relationshipsbetween a given item X and its associated items {A, B, C, . . . }. Theorigins of the item X is expected to be over some communication channel,for example an email transmitted over SMTP or a RSS data feed accessedover a transport protocol (for example HTTP or HTTPS). Furthermore, forthe given item X there may be one or more associated items that aretransmitted with or accessible via item X. For example, in the case ofemail there may be a photo attachment that can be processed by the datamanagement and subsequently saved as a Photo item (of typePhotoItemKind) in the database of the cell that belongs to the user whoreceived the email. Also, in the case of email there may be some contactinformation or web links embedded in the body of the email which whenprocessed can be extracted as a contact item kind or as link item kindrespectively. As another example, in the case of RSS data feed there maybe related set of content that can be parsed as corresponding item kindsand stored in the database of the cell that belongs to the user whosubscribed to the RSS data feed. It is desirable that in such caseswhere the underlying content X has distinct set of content {A, B, C, . .. } included with it or content {A, B, C, . . . } that can be accessedvia it, the data management system which processes the content andsubsequently stores it should preserve the relationships between thecontent such that when we access original content X the user has meansto easily access the content connected to X, i.e., {A, B, C, . . . }.This requires that the system explicitly capture such connectionsbetween items at the time the items are persisted in the database of acell using the concept of system defined connections such that thisinformation be available with the connected items. Furthermore, suchsystem defined connections can be between items of any types as definedin the Universal Item Information Model (UIIM) and models 1-to-manyrelationships using schema component defined within the Universal ItemDescription Language (UIDL). As shown in FIG. 6, each system definedconnection may include a <SysConnID> element and a <Source> elementwhich are defined as child elements of the <ItemDetails> child elementof the AbstractItemKind component type. Hence, all types of items thatextend from AbstractItemKind can explicitly record the systemconnections with one or more items. The <SysConnID> element describes aunique identifier for each system defined connection which is set by thesystem in the parent item X and all the child items {A, B, C, . . . }which are system connected to the parent item. The <Source> elementcould describe an email address or other unique identifier which is usedto identify the source of the parent item wherein all items below theparent (i.e., contained child items such as attachments in emails)include the <Source> element. For example, for an email message, theemail address value representing the source can be determined from thecontact item that the system generates from the “From:” field in theemail header. The format of the source will be a URI of the followingformat [Transport_Type]:[ID]. The [Transport_Type] component coulddescribe an identifier for some communication medium to push or pullcontent; for example acceptable values for Transport_Type could be{Email, RSS, . . . }. The [ID] component could describe an identifierfor the source that generated or published the content which implicitlyhas multiple items connected to it; for example, an email address of theuser who sent the email could be the [ID] of the source, or username ofthe source, or URL where the RSS data feed is available, etc.

Hence, to preserve the relationships between items when a particularcontent is processed and subsequently stored in the database of aparticular cell, the system will automatically add the<SystemConnection> elements <SysConnID> and <Source> in all child items{A, B, C, . . . } connected to the parent item X. Similarly, the systemwill also automatically add in the parent item X the <SystemConnection>elements <SysConnID> and <Source>. This will allow user to subsequentlyretrieve the parent item X such that the system can on-demand facilitatethe retrieval of the child items {A, B, C, . . . } via system connectionlinks. Likewise, this will also allow user to subsequently retrieve thechild items {A, B, C, . . . } such that the system can on-demandfacilitate the retrieval of the parent item X via system connectionlinks.

FIGS. 15A and 15B illustrate further details of the user definedconnections shown in FIG. 6. The user defined connections permit a userto relate a given item with one or more related items in an informationmanagement system such that the connections between the items areimplemented as two-way links specified in the item instance. Hence, theuser defined connections allow capturing of 1-to-1 relationships betweentwo items of any type. FIG. 15A illustrates an example of the datastructure for the related item type (which is the schema component forthe user defined connection within the <ItemDetails> child element ofthe AbstractItemKind). As shown in FIG. 15A (and in the example shown inFIG. 7A), each related item has a URI that identifies the connecteditem, a KindID that identifies the kind of item on the other end, and arelation type element that defines the type of relationship by which theitem containing the connection is related to the item at the other endof the connection.

The creation of an item-specific relation from Item A to Item B impliesthat two links are created (i.e., URIs being instantiated for two-waylinks), one from A to B and the other from B to A, such that theconnection from A to B results in the update of Item A in the databaseand the connection from B to A results in the update of Item B in thedatabase. The relation URIs are then included as part of the XML dataassociated with the items as shown in FIG. 7A. The related item linksare actionable since a user can click on a link to be transportedinstantaneously to the relevant item or display a list view of theconnected item(s). Hence, such user defined connections is anadvancement of the current simple URL links used on the web in followingthree ways: (a) user can define connection between the items that are2-way links, i.e., user can browse from item A to B using the linkpresent in item A; or given item B browse from item B to A using thelink present in itemB; (b) the connection between the item is typed,i.e., user can know what type of item is connected on the other endrather than the current web link scheme which is just a web page; (c)actionable item which can be acted on locally, i.e., we can navigatefrom item A to item B or from item B to item A via the 2-way links as ifthe connected items were present locally (using the user definedconnection mechanism).

Query Structure and Language

The Situated Query Language of the data management system will bedescribed in the context of the exemplary implementation that uses theUniversal Item Information Model (UIIM) as the underlying informationmodel for the data management system. However, the data managementsystem and method can be used with any information model. The querylanguage can be used to formulate and capture “situated queries” thatcan be executed in a particular context, for example a query can beprocessed that returns information in context of a specified cell wherea cell organizes a set of applications together with a database forthose applications. This approach of specifying a query is differentfrom an SQL query. SQL queries are formulated “outside” the relationaldatabase and have no context beyond the database as a whole. On theother hand, every Situated Query Language query is executed in thecontext of some cell. A query can access various different contexts viaa scoping qualifier which is used to specify the cells where the desiredinformation items of interest may be present. Hence, situated queriesallow flexible search sessions to discover relevant items in anabsolutely and/or relatively defined set of sources such that theunderlying meaning of the query remains the same as we shift the contextof the query. For example, “My Friend's music” has a different resultbut the same meaning for me than for you. Moreover, such queries will bevery useful to interactively search within different information basesand also allow integration of relevant content in a purposeful way. Suchqueries can also be defined and employed in the simple creation ofapplications which can be used in multiple contexts (with the samemeaning) without rewrites.

Furthermore, the query language and model described can leverage thestandard XQuery Language and operates on any item that is modeled usingUniversal Item Information Model (UIIM) and defined using the XML-basedUniversal Item Description Language (UIDL). The advantages of situatedquery language are: (a) the queries allow context to be addressedabsolutely and/or relatively to the current cell; (b) queries take place“in context” as opposed to outside of the database; this means thatapplications developed in the context of given cell or a given accountcan be used with the same meaning in other cells or other accountswithout change; this is essential for sharing of user constructedapplications and the resulting network effects of sharing of userconstructed applications; (c) the query model takes advantage oftagging, connections and user account (i.e., membership) in order tobuild the most general framework for access to content.

The query structure for the data management system will be of thefollowing: Query [Type] [Scope] [PageSize] [MaxSize] [Expression]wherein each query has following required top-level components [Type],[Scope] and an [Expression] component and following optional top-levelcomponents: [PageSize] and [MaxSize]. The [Expression] componentcomprises the sub-components <conditions>, <kind>, <orderby>, <filter>,<connect>, <tag>, <groupby> and <count>.

FIG. 19 illustrates the specification of a situated query having a scopedeclaration (sc) and a query expression (expr) and the query isevaluated related to a cell (c). The specification of the operationscope (sc,c) has inputs that are the scope declaration sc and a cellinstance c and the output returns a set of cells which have the value ofthe scope declaration sc. The specification of the operation evaluation(expr, c) has inputs that are the expression and the cell instance andthe output returns all items in the one or more cells (identified by thescope declaration) that match the expression. The result of the query<sc,expr> evaluated at cell c is shown in FIG. 19.

The [Type] of the query specifies the general type of content that thequery intended to return. For example, the [Type] can be used to expressthat a query is for cells or items or tags or user accounts orapplication components or mixed set of resources (using a unionoperator).

The [Scope] is a formula determining a set of cells from which theresult set will be generated. Hence, the scope of the query enablestargeted search to take place. For example, the scope may be ‘THIScell’; or ‘My Photo Cell’; or ‘All Cells owned by My Account’; or ‘Allcells to which my account belongs’; or ‘All cells belonging to myfriends’; or ‘All cells belonging to contacts that have been tagged“friends” or ‘music’”, etc. Hence, typically, the query may be processedin two stages: first a computation of the scope yielding a set of cellsthat are relevant to the query; and second, the computation of theexpression part of the query within each of those cells with the queryresult being the union of the results of evaluating [Expression] foreach cell in the result of evaluating [Scope]. The format of the [Scope]specification may consist of 1) scope actions and/or 2) two or morescope actions combined together in various ways using set operationswherein the set operations may include “union” to aggregate cells,“collect” to chain one scope action with another scope action and otherknown set operations.

The scope actions are all evaluated in the in context of a cell instancesuch that we can qualify the results of the query (which in the mostcommon case is the information item instances for which we aresearching). The expression of the scope actions may include any of thefollowing methods: getCellOwnerAction to retrieve information about theowner of cell from the database; getCellMembersAction to retrieveinformation about all members of the specified cell from the database;getCellsOwnedByAccountAction to retrieve information about all the roomsthat a user has access to as specified in the database;getCellsWhoseMemberIsAccountAction to retrieve information for all therooms that a user has access to as specified by the database;FilterByTag to filter provided objects (for example, cells and accounts)based on tag value such that the filter functions as a predicate whichis evaluated in terms of the conditions being true or false. TheFilterByTag method will be very useful in situations where a useraccount is tagged in a particular way. For example, a private tag“friend” may be defined by a user for a particular account. Such tagswill be private tags such that only the user who defined the private tagcan see and apply it as a filter using the FilterByTag method.Furthermore, the FilterByTag can be used as a scope action to find cellsbelonging to particular accounts that have been tagged with a privatetag. For example, the account of a particular user may be taggedprivately as “friend” by a user that only the user can see and apply asa filter as part of subsequent query processing. In this way the user Xcan tag the contact item for the user Y as “friend” which may be publictag (on the contact item) and also tag the account of the same user Y as“friend” that is private tag such that the scope action can filter andsearch for cells that are belonging to accounts that are known by theuser X to be of his or her friends using the private tags at the accountlevel. This implies that web accessible content belonging to aparticular contact that has been privately tagged (for example, withprivate tag “friend” at the account level) could also be filtered usingthe FilterByTag method.

An example of the scope action specification is the following:

<scope xmlns=http://www.ludilabs.com/all/definition>  <opname=scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount>${cell.owner}</op> </scope>

Another example of scope action specification which involves combiningcell instances owned by a user with the cell instances that the user isa member of:

<scope xmlns=http://www.ludilabs.com/all/definition>  <op name=union>  <op name=scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount>${cell.owner}</op>   <opname=scope.GetCellsWhoseMemberIsAccount>${cell.owner}   </op>  </op></scope>

The [PageSize] of the query can optionally be used to specify the numberof items (or objects) in the page of data to be returned in the queryresult such that the calling application can control the size of theresult as a small subset within pages.

The [MaxSize] of the query can optionally be used to specify the maximumnumber of objects (for example items) to be returned in the queryresult.

The [Expression] of the query is used to specify the criteria of findingand returning information items stored in an application database (i.e.,specific database containers associated with cell instances). The formatof the expression may consist of one or more of the followingcomponents: <conditions>, <kind>, <orderby>, <filter>, <connect>, <tag>,<groupby> and <count>.

The <condition> specified for the query expression are dependent on[Type] of query. For example, if [Type]=‘Account’, the query conditionswould be limited to returning list of user account or member list.

The <kind> is used to specify the type of content the query will bereturning, i.e., the query results will be of the type of contentidentified by the <kind> identifier. For example, the query will beprocessed by a cell that has a database of items of the <kind> equal to‘PhotoItem’ or a ‘ContactItem’.

The <orderby> component is used to specify the XPath value to referencethe child element within the item such that the query results can beordered by the specific child element within item instances (in theresult of the query). The <orderby> component will also have the<direction> attribute that specifies whether the results are ordered in‘ascending’ or ‘descending’ order, for example in terms of the lastmodified date of the item instance.

The <filter> component is used to specify the XPath value to referencethe child element such that results of the query can be filtered by aspecific child-element within the returned item instances.

The <connect> component is used to specify that the returned itemsshould be connected to (i.e., related to) the item referenced by thespecified ItemID (which uniquely identifies an item instance).

The <tag> component is used to specify that the returned item instanceshave a specific tag value which may be in either the user-defined tag orsystem-managed tag.

The <groupby> element can optionally be used to specify the format ofthe results of the query, i.e., how the returned information or itemsshould be grouped, for example, using one or more key values inparticular elements within an item to group the data in the queryresult.

The <count> element can optionally be used to specify the number ofitems to be returned in the query result.

Furthermore two or more sub-expressions may be combined using the <join>operation element with the <type> attribute used to specify whether thesub-expressions will be combined using the logical operators such as‘or’, ‘and’, and ‘not’. There can be multiple joined sub-expressionsusing the <join> operation element.

The following is an example of a query expression that filters for itemswhich are contact items and have LastName (in contact item) having valueequal to “Hayes” or tagged with the keyword value of “cool” such thatthe query results are sorted in order by LastName and then FirstName:

<expression xmlns=\“urn:com:sharefare:webos:basecomponents-1.0\”>  <jointype=\“or\”>  <filter> /ludi:contactItemKind/ludi:PersonName/ludi:LastName=\“Hayes\” </filter>  <tag>   cool  </tag>  </join>  <kind>   Contact  </kind> <orderby direction=\“asc\\”> /ludi:contactItemKind/ludi:PersonName/ludi:LastName  </orderby> <orderby direction=\“asc\”> /ludi:contactItemKind/ludi:PersonName/ludi:FirstName  </orderby></expression>;

Furthermore, here is the sample Java code for creating theapplication-level query which carries out the query within the cell thatis the context for the query:

// prepare query  Query q = queryService.createQuery(   “<query><scopetype=\“cell\” value=\“${this.cell}\”/>” +   “<expression><kind>” +kindID + “</kind></expression></query>”);

FIG. 16 illustrates an example of an application component definitionfor a ContactComponent which includes a query to retrieve a ContactItem.The ContactItem includes a Contacts ItemList and a ConnectedContactswherein both include a query as shown in FIG. 16. FIG. 17A illustrates aset of run-time code for the query to fetch all of the Contact items ina sorted order using the known W3C XQuery's FLWOR(for-let-where-orderby-return) expression. The XQuery is executed by theXML Database which returns the contact items, as an ordered list basedon person's last name, from a DB container (associated with the cell)which has a collection of XML document-style item instances. FIG. 17Billustrates a set of code for the query to fetch all of the connecteditems for a given contact item (identified by an itemID) and for a givencell. This code is generated by the query processor. To furtherillustrate the query language of the system, several additional examplesof cell-level queries are provided below.

In a first example, the query (which is formulated in this example usingthe provided Java code sample) returns all that are of type ContentKindor LinkKind such that they are present in cells that either thespecified user owns or the specified user is a member of the cells:

String queryXml = “<queryxmlns=\“http://www.ludilabs.com/al1/definition\”>” + “<scope>” + “  <opname=\“union\”>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsWhoseMemberIsAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  </op>” +“</scope>” + “<expression>” + “  <join type=\“or\”>” + “ <kind>ContactItem</kind>” + “  <kind>LinkItem</kind>” + “  </join>” + “</expression>” + “</query>”;

In the second example, the query returns all items that are of typeContactItemKind and filters the result using the <FirstName> of thecontact instance such that the specified user owns or is member of theunderlying cell where the item is present:

String queryXml = “<queryxmlns=\“http://www.ludilabs.com/al1/definition\”>” + “ <scope>” + “  <opname=\“union\”>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsWhoseMemberIsAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  </op>” +“ </scope>” + “ <expression>” + “  <kind>ContactItem</kind>” + “ <filter>//ludi:FirstName=\“ ” + firstName + “\”</filter>” + “</expression>” + “</query>”;

In a third example, the query returns all items that have the specifiedURI link (referencing specific content) such that the specified userowns or is member of the underlying cell where the contact is present:

String queryXml = “<queryxmlns=\“http://www.ludilabs.com/al1/definition\”>” + “  <scope>” + “ <op name=\“union\”>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsWhoseMemberIsAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  </op>” +“ </scope>” + “ <expression>” + “  <filter>//ludi:Content=\“ ” + url +“\”</filter>” + “ </expression>” + “</query>”;

In a fourth example, the query returns all items that are connected tothe specified item instance such that the specified user owns or ismember of the underlying cell where the item is present:

String queryXml = “<queryxmlns=\“http://www.ludilabs.com/all/definition\”>” + “ <scope>” + “  <opname=\“union\”>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsWhoseMemberIsAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  </op>” +“ </scope>” + “ <expression>” + “  <connect>” + item.getId( ) +“</connect>” + “ </expression>” + “</query>”;

In a fifth example, the query returns all items that are of specifiedItem kinds (identified as Item KindIDs) and connected to specified iteminstances and including specific system- or user-specified tags and sortthe results in descending order by the last modified date such that thespecified user owns or is member of the underlying cell where the itemis present:

String queryXml = “<queryxmlns=\“http://www.ludilabs.com/all/definition\”>” + “ <scope>” + “  <opname=\“union\”>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  <op name=\“scope.GetCellsWhoseMemberIsAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>” + “  </op>” +“ </scope>” + “ <expression>” +  (kind == null ? “ ” : “<kind>” + kind +“</kind>”) +  (tag == null ? “ ” : “<tag>” + tag + “</tag>”) +  (connect== null ? “ ” : “<connect>” + connect + “</connect>”) +  (orderby ==null ? “ ” :  “<orderby direction=\“descending\”>” + orderby +“</orderby>”) +  “ </expression>” +  “</query>”;

In an sixth example, the query returns all items that are of specifiedItemKinds (identified as Item KindIDs) and connected to the specifieditem instance and including specific system-managed tag of specifiedtype and with specified role and sort the results in descending order bythe last modified date such that the specified user owns or is member ofthe underlying cell where the item is present:

 String queryXml =  “<queryxmlns=\“http://www.ludilabs.com/al1/definition\”>” +  “ <scope>” +  “ <op name=\“union\”>” +  “  <op name= \“scope.GetCellsOwnedByAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>”+  “  <op name= \“scope.GetCellsWhoseMemberIsAccount\”>${cell.owner}</op>”+  “ </op>” +  “ </scope>” +  “ <expression>” +  (kind == null ? “ ” :“<kind>” + kind + “</kind>”) +  (tag == null ? “ ” : “<tagtype=\“SystemTagType\” role=\“ ” + role + “\” name=\“ ” + category +“\”>” + tag + “</tag>”) +  (connect == null ? “ ” : “<connect>” +connect + “</connect>”) +  (orderby == null ? “ ” : “<orderbydirection=\“descending\”>” +  orderby + “</orderby>”)  “</expression>” +  “ </query>”;

In addition to the queries, the tags permit items to be sorted andfiltered. The items can be sorted by basic item attributes (as definedin the AbstractItem Kind definition) such as source (originator),creation date, date modified, subject, and system-managed tags such asperson (for example, the item creator), location, time, category, kinds,ratings and other general tags, i.e., user-defined tags. The filteringmay be done based on the tags, such as the Person tag, the Location tag,the Time tag, the Category tag, the Kinds tag, the Rating tag, theuser-defined tag or all of the tags.

Query Design for Retrieving Connected Items

FIG. 18 illustrates a connection model of the data management system.The item connection model will be described in the context of theUniversal Item Information Model (UIIM) of the exemplary embodiment ofthe data management system. In the item connection model, an item mayrefer to a related item via a connection relationship model where itemrelationships are specified by ns:RelatedItemType that describes an ItemReference that is a URI and a relation type that is a user-defined tagto describe the type of relation between the two item instances. Asshown in the example shown in FIG. 15, two connections/relationships areshown along with the ns:RelatedItemType data structure. FIGS. 7A and 7Balso illustrate a ContentItem type that has the connections using theRelatedItemType data structure. The connections and relationships permitthe data management system to provide one or more zoom-levels to accessan item instance. When an item instance is accessed via a query andactions, each instance may have a default zoom-level for the particularItemKind. The Zoom levels may include Zoom Level 0 (where metadata onlyis retrieved along with any encapsulated data components), Zoom Level 1(where metadata and all immediately related item instances areretrieved), Zoom Level 2 (where metadata and any specific related itemsspecified by the user are retrieved, Zoom Level 3 (where no metadata,but all related items are retrieved) and Zoom Level 4 (where nometadata, but all specific related items are retrieved).

As discussed earlier, the connections may be stored in a connectionelement for each item and may be either system generated or usergenerated. The user generated connections permit purpose-based andobject-oriented, two-way linking of related items. Examples of systemgenerated connections for a contact item are shown in FIG. 7A above. Forthe system generated connections, when a piece of content originatesfrom a transport-oriented source (e.g., email), the content is parsedinto its applicable item kinds that may include, for an email messagefor example: attachments, sender information (parsed from the ‘From:’header field of the email) and the message body including Links andEmbedded Photos. For the user generated connections, a user can connectany item of any type with an item of any other item type wherein an itemcan be connected to n number of other items. Furthermore, in the datamanagement system only persons authorized to work with a particular itemcan create connections from/to that item.

Once items are connected to each other, the items can be viewed by a“Connected View” feature of the data management system. Once the itemsare connected, the data management system permits queries to retrievethe related items. Hence, for the example of where the user has selectedan item that is of any type and the user needs to see all the connecteditems to the selected item instance, the query will return for a givencell (a) all system defined connections (i.e., all items that came inwith the selected item), (b) all items that are first level of userdefined connections, (c) and the contact that sent the item.Furthermore, the connected items would be accessed by the datamanagement system using the ItemID of the connected item which would bethe value set in the <ItemReference> element within the <RelatedItem>child element of the base type AbstractItemKind.

As another example, the query for retrieving related items wherein theuser has selected a contact item and needs to see all items connected tothe selected contact item instance, the query needs to fetch all theitems from the contact and show them as related items to the Contactitem selected. The query results returned for a given cell in the datamanagement system will include (a) contact (which should correspond tothe <Source> element in the related items), (b) all items sent from thatcontact (for example, emails, photos, and any other type of items), (c)all items connected to the selected contact item. Similar to previousexample, the ItemID (which is set in the <ItemReference> element withinthe <RelatedItem> child element of the base type AbstractItemKind) willbe used to retrieve the connected items.

As another example, the query for retrieving related items wherein theitem is of type EmailMessageKind, i.e., user has selected an email anduser wants to see connected item to the selected email. The queryresults returned for a given cell in the data management system willinclude (a) the selected email item, (b) all items that are systemdefined to the email, i.e., all items that were originally to the emailand/or parsed from the message body (for example, a web URL link or anemail address embedded in the email message body), and (c) the contactitem for the person who sent the message (i.e., the ‘From:’ field of theemail header). Similar to previous examples, the ItemID (which is set inthe <ItemReference> element within the <RelatedItem> child element ofthe base type AbstractItemKind) will be used to retrieve the connecteditems.

While the foregoing has been with reference to a particular embodimentof the invention, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the artthat changes in this embodiment may be made without departing from theprinciples and spirit of the invention, the scope of which is defined bythe appended claims.

1. A data management method for managing a plurality of objects, themethod comprising: providing, in a computing device data managementsystem, one or more cells with each cell having an object containerwherein each object container is capable of containing a plurality oftypes of items; providing, in the computing device data managementsystem, one or more connection elements within each cell such that eachconnection is between items in the same cell or items in different cellsand each connection indicates an association between the items; andproviding, in the computing device data management system, tag elementswithin items that denote tags that are associated with each item whereinthe tags indicate a context of the item so that the item is searchablebased on the tag; wherein each cell object container comprises one ormore pieces of information linked with the cell object container whereinthe one or more pieces of information are stored in a native XML format;and wherein each piece of information in each cell object container isbased on an abstract base type object having one or more generalcharacteristics elements of an object including an ItemID element thatspecifies a unique item identifier and a KindID element that specifies aunique identifier that identifies a type of the content and one or moresemantic property elements, and a plurality of base components, eachbase component being a child of the abstract base type object andinheriting the one or more general characteristics and one or moresemantic properties, each base component being a container item kindthat describes a type of object and encapsulates the particular type ofobject wherein each type of object associated with the system isrepresented by the abstract base type object and one of the basecomponents.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the one or moreconnection elements further comprises using a <RelatedItem> elementwithin an <ItemDetails> child element of the abstract base type objectto provide a connection between one or more items.
 3. The method ofclaim 1, wherein providing the connection between items in the same cellfurther comprises providing a connection element containing informationabout a connection between a first object in one object container and asecond object in same object container.
 4. The method of claim 1,wherein providing the connection between items in different cellsfurther comprises providing a connection element containing informationabout a connection between a first object in one object container and asecond object in a different object container.
 5. The method of claim 1further comprising storing, in an embedded XML database, the one or morecells.
 6. The method of claim 1 further comprising providing, in anycell, a situated query to retrieve data from the particular cell or fromother cells.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the situated queryfurther comprises a type specification that specifies a type of item toreturn by the situated query.
 8. The method of claim 6, wherein thesituated query further comprises a scope where the scope describes a setof cells from which the situated query is to retrieve data.
 9. Themethod of claim 8, wherein the scope further comprises one or moreabsolute references and one or more relative references combined withone or more operators.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein each of theone or more relative references are resolved relative to the contextcell for the query.
 11. The method of claim 8, wherein the situatedquery has a expression wherein the situated query with the expressionreturns all items in the cells identified by the scope which furthermatch the expression.
 12. The method of claim 6, wherein the situatedquery further comprises a page size that define a number of items toreturn at a time by the situated query.
 13. The method of claim 6,wherein the situated query further comprises a maximum size that definea maximum number of items returned by the situated query.
 14. The methodof claim 11, wherein the expression of the situated query furthercomprises one of a kind element that defines a type of item which thesituated query is supposed to return, a filter element that filters theitems returned by the situated query, a connect element so that thesituated query returns all items related to a defined item, a tagelement so that the situated query returns all items that match the tagelement with respect to the tags, an orderby element that orders theitems returned by the situated query based on the values of a childelement within each item, a groupby element that groups the itemsreturned by the situated query based on the values of a child elementwithin each item, a count element such that the situated query returnsthe count of items returned by the situated query in the event that thecount element was not present and a condition element that limits thesituated query based on the type of entities to be returned.
 15. Themethod of claim 11, wherein the situated query further comprises aplurality of expressions combined together using a join operationwherein the situated query returns all items in the one or more cellsidentified by the scope that match one or more of the expressions. 16.The method of claim 1, wherein each base component has one or moresemantic properties that are defined in the one or more semanticproperty elements and wherein the one or more semantic property elementsfurther comprise a tag associated with an object.
 17. The method ofclaim 16, wherein a tag further comprises a tag generated by a user oran automatically generated tag, wherein each automatically generated tagfurther comprises a tag type name, a role and a value of the rolewherein the role is a reference to an element within the base componentto which the tag is associated and wherein the tag type name furthercomprises a time tag type, a person tag type, a location tag type, acategory tag type or a rating tag type.
 18. The method of claim 1,wherein each base component has one or more semantic properties that aredefined in the one or more semantic property elements and the one ormore semantic property elements further comprise a note associated withan object.
 19. The method of claim 1 further comprising creating a newbase component for a new type of object, the new base componentdescribing the new type of object and encapsulating the underlyingcontent of the new type of object within a generic content elementwherein the new type of object is represented by the new base component.20. The method of claim 1, wherein the abstract base type object furthercomprises a views element, an actions element and a constraints elementwherein the views element describes zero or more display typesassociated with the abstract base type object, the actions elementdescribes zero or more actions associated with the abstract base typeobject and the constraints element describes zero or more constraintsassociated with the abstract base type object.